A LOCAL councillor has described illegal dumping in North Clondalkin as an “epidemic” after recent figures revealed how South Dublin County Council has spent over €4 million in cleansing costs over the last three years.
Clondalkin Sinn Fein councillor, Mark Ward, said the figures released by the council were “shocking”.
“Illegal dumping is an epidemic within our communities,” Cllr Ward said.
“The dumping negatively impacts on all aspects of our lives.
“This behaviour is affecting our quality of live and is having a bearing on the mental health of people living in the areas affected.
“The figures that I received today show an average of €1.3 million per year spent on removing illegal dumping across South Dublin County.
“This is an excess of €4 million over a three-year period. This is money that could be spent on enhancing the community.
“There is an additional disturbing aspect to these figures,” he added.
“The cost to the council spent on clearing illegal dumping has remained steady on about €1.3 million per annum but the increase in reports of illegal dumping rose by 43 per cent between 2016 and 2017.
“I have no doubt that there is a direct correlation between these figures and the increase in the time it takes the council to remove the dumping. Parts of our communities are never litter free.”
Cllr Ward recounted that when he grew up in North Clondalkin it had many socio-economic problems such as unemployment, lack of community facilities, crime and drug use but it was clean in comparison to today.
“How can we expect the children of today, who will be the adults of tomorrow, to respect their area when they have to walk through mounds of dumped waste on the way to school?
“A lot of the green spaces in our communities that could be used for playing football and walking dogs and so on are unusable due to the amount of discarded waste.
“If you take a walk around the area you will see scorched green spaces from people burning waste.
“While I agree that there is no place within our communities for this type of behaviour, more needs to be done to get to the root causes of the problem.
“Privatising waste management has created a culture of illegal dumping.
“You only have to take a walk around some of the litter blackspots in Clondalkin and you will see the detrimental impact that it is having on our area.
“Earlier this year I had a motion passed to return bin collection to council control. This motion was passed but as it’s an executive function nothing happened.
“There are also a number of unregulated waste collection services operating across the county,” Cllr Ward calaimed.
“I have seen reports of residents getting waste removed by one of these unscrupulous operators only to be fined months later when their waste was dumped on the side of the road.
“We need action from the highest level to deal with this scourge of our community.
“I have campaigned consistently since taking my seat on the council to tackle this issue.”